How to get your CSR message across to the masses

By Dilaila Mohd Yunus

The benefits of getting involved in a CSR cause is not always tangible.  Instead, CSR appeals to the basic inherent goodness of mankind. Good CSR ads evoke sympathy or outrage – strong feelings that galvanise people into taking immediate action to help change a situation.

Get noticed

CSR ads should be as intrusive as possible. It should jump at you and make you stop and read, watch or listen.

Playing safe is the safest way to relegate your communications programme into obscurity.

Shocking or controversial ads are best at raising human conscience.  The more disturbing, the better the impact.  Take United Colors of Benetton. Their ads have spurred worldwide interest because they dare to be different.

Be negative

A picture of a suffering child is more disturbing than a picture of a cute, gurgling baby. Likewise, a picture of someone in mourning is more moving than one where someone is celebrating.

Kevin Carter’s ‘Starving Child’ is a case in point. The image is so disturbing, it has successfully raised awareness and haunted many, including he himself.

This works for headlines and scripts too.

“Every time you have sex with someone, you are also sleeping with all the people he or she has slept with for the past seven years” is more disturbing,  which also makes it more memorable than the cleverly worded,  ‘Safe sex saves mankind’

Show your market the consequence of NOT taking immediate action.

They should go away thinking, “That’s horrible. What if that happens to me?”

One ad, one message.

It’s a busy world we live in. Time is always of essence. And hardly anyone chooses to read ads.

Too many messages and your main message will be lost. Find the main point you want to communicate and focus on that.

Save the details for your website and brochures.

Make it personal

Try to make your communication as personal as possible.

Talk to your audience as if you’re talking one-on-one, rather than a group of nameless, faceless strangers.

Avoid ‘I’ or ‘they/them’. Make your audience feel involved. Choose ‘we/us’ and ‘you/your’ instead.

Talk their language. There’s no point speaking the Queen’s English if your audience doesn’t.

Use real situations where possible.  Fact is, humans are fascinated by ‘true stories’.  Real incidents make things real even if it’s something that happens to a friend’s friend’s cousin’s sister’s dog.

Easy readability

You are talking to the general public. It’s not the time to improve literary standards, write beautiful prose or show off your vocabulary.

Write as simple and concise as possible so your message is clearly understood by people from all walks of life.

Use simple words. ‘Use’ rather than ‘utilise’, ‘depressed’ instead of ‘desolate’, ‘poor’ and not  ‘destitute’.

Use shorter sentences.

Use a lot of paragraphs.

Use subheads to break a long copy

Use bullets or numbers if you have a lot of points to make

As you can see, the writer is a fan of short sentences and paragraphs. She is an international award-winning KL-based creative consultant with more than a decade’s experience in some of Malaysia’s most prominent advertising agencies and now runs In Other Words.